White charity

MA dissertation for the MA Postcolonial Studies
Goldsmith's College, University of London
handed in on 12th September 2006
Reg No: 33023558
White charity
Whiteness and myth in German charity advertisements
contents:
–
Introduction
p. 2
–
Chapter I: Whiteness
p. 6
–
Chapter II: Barthes' Mythologies
p. 11
–
Excursus
p. 21
–
Chapter III: Analysis of charity advertisements
p. 23
–
Conclusion
p. 31
–
Bibliography
p. 33
acknowledgements
I want to thank Anne, Annika, Carolin, Daniel, Dominique, Erdem, Fenja, John, Michael, Oscar,
Peter and the Stabi lunch community for inspirational ideas, helpful tips, proof reading, practical
support and cheering up.
1
Introduction
“Meanwhile, not nearly enough work is being done on those
who hold the power and pull the strings.... Let the poor study
themselves. They already know what is wrong with their lives
and if you truly want to help them, the best you can do is give
them a clearer idea of how their oppressors are working now
and can be expected to work in the future.” (George 1976:
289, quoted in Hutnyk 1996: 12)
In Germany, as well as in other European countries, streets, tube and train stations are clustered
with billboards full of different kind of advertisement. Especially around Christmas time about 50%
of those ads are operated by Charity or Aid NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations), but even all
year round, charity ads constitute a bigger percentage of billboard ads. Generally speaking, one
perceives only few pictures of black1 people in German advertisements. Except for a few highly
sexualised or exoticised images of black people in commercial German billboard ads, charities
basically have a monopole on portraying black people in public space.
Elsewhere2, I have offered an in depth visual analysis of these images. As this essay is to be taken as
a continuation, I hereby shortly summarise the conclusions of the precedent essay to clarify the
starting point for this analysis.
Out of 84 charity advertisements3 I collected, 58 display black people. In these images, three major
topics were recurring over and again: poverty, illness or invalidity, and flight. Other repetitious
1 I use the terms 'black' and 'white' as social and political constructions, which are bound to time and space; not as a
description of skin colour (Dyer 1997: 49). I use italics to mark them as constructed. As my visual analysis, focused
on black people defined as “with African roots and routes” (Gilroy 1995), I stay with this definition in this essay as
well, in order not to confuse the reader. I am aware of the definition of the term 'Black' with capital B, referring to a
political category of resistance, including all people of colour “who because of their appearance fall victim to
racisms or projections” (Philipp 2006: 11, translation TK). In large parts of my work, Black can be seen as analogue
to black, as whiteness uses the same strategies towards its various Others, there are merely different stereotypes.
With the term 'white', I refer to all people who gain from the power of whiteness (definition follows).
I do not consider these categories as homogeneous, as they include hierarchies and are intertwined with other
categories such as gender, class, sexuality, age and physical ability.
2 Kiesel (2006)
3 I deliberately focus in this whole essay on billboard advertisements. I do not want to confine the discussed charities
to the position they represent in their ads, but discuss their ads as part of a indeed public discourse. In my opinion,
the billboard ads are chiefly responsible for how the public perceives charities and alongside the whole topic of
'development cooperation'. For an in depth discourse analysis of fundamental publications of Misereor and Brot für
die Welt I refer to Philipp (2006). While proportionally only very few people read publications or browse the
websites of the charities, the ads reach daily millions of city dwellers. People who view them, cannot chose to see
them, the images are rather forced upon the viewer. While one decides to watch TV, buy a magazine or listen to the
radio, one cannot decide not to see the ads while out on the street. At the same time, the image is experienced in a
short time sequence and the viewer mostly does not get the opportunity to look at details or read small letter
inscriptions or titles. S/he rather doesn’t concentrate completely on these pictures, as s/he is coming from and going
to somewhere and has probably other things in her/his mind. Because of the high presence of these advertisements,
they contribute to the establishment of a clean conscience of the entire German society, even for those who do not
give donations. The two biggest players in charity billboard ads Brot für die Welt and Misereor, received in 2005
together donations of around 123 Mio Euro. That is 1,50 Euro per German per annum.
2
themes were the depiction of a) black people as natural or in a natural environment, b) black people
as naked or with few clothes on, c) black people as passive, d) black people as needy and not being
able to help themselves but d) dependent on the white subject/charity/donor, e) black people as
inhabitants of a stone age: without technology, cities or complex systems, f) black people as
grinning, g) black people as speechless, h) black people as anonymous collectivity (not as
individual) and i) black people as producer of agricultural products.
As I could identify a general focus on deficiencies of black people, I argued that charities construct
them as inferior and 'underdeveloped'. This constructed inferiority was furthermore reinforced by a
preferable depiction of children4, a camera perspective that was in half of the cases chosen from an
upward angle, and a choice in light and colours that created a rather dark atmosphere and thus
highlighted misery. Additionally, as if being in a panopticon5, black people are exposed to the white
gaze. Be it the 'black kid as grinning' – which is often perceived as a positive exception – or rather
the 'black kid as picking up rice out of the mud', in either case s/he is fixed on rigid stereotypes.
With Pieterse (1992) et al., I discussed the genealogies of these images and as a result concluded
that charities on the one hand draw on stereotypes of colonial times as well as on racial theory and
on the other hand use or help to create new stereotypes. However, in any case it is the charities and
their designers who speak for, define and construct the identity of the represented black subject. In
addition, it seems that their strategy follows the rule that their images remain on a humanitarian
level and never include a political dimension. I concluded that through images charities are able to
very subtle communicate ideas “which had they been put in words would have been unacceptable”
(van Leeuwen & Jewitt 2001: 1).
White people, on the contrary, are only depicted in three ads, twice as women consumers of fair
trade products and once as white women demonstrating. White men are completely absent from all
advertisements. However, as I will argue later, white people are always present through the
superiority that is suggested in the images. That black and white people are never portrayed together
in one image, confirms Pieterse's observation that the white imagery of black focuses on domination
instead of dialogue (Pieterse 1992: 10).
The fact that white people are absent or – as I will argue later – invisible in these posters is not an
obstacle but rather a reason to extend the analysis. Arguing with hooks (1989 quoted in McClintock
1995: 7f), Morrison (1995: 125, in Wollrad 2005: 123) and Spivak (1999: 1), it is necessary to not
only analyse the representation of the Other6, but to deconstruct power in itself. Hence, in this essay,
I will redirect the perspective onto the white subject. Whiteness, and not only blackness, has to be
analysed as a racial construction in this context. My focus lies on the question of how the hegemony
4 Pieterse warns us that “[t]he hierarchy of age overlaps with and reinforces the hierarchy of race.” (Pieterse 1992:
171).
5 In this case the notion of being able to see without being seen is more important than the notion of having a
centralised location of surveillance.
6 In the Lacanian definition: in the relation to the Other, the subject gains identity (Ashcroft et al 2000: 170). Hence, I
understand 'othering' as “the process by which imperial discourse creates its 'others'” (Ashcroft et al 2000: 171).
3
of whiteness is accomplished, manifested and re-established through these very advertisements and
which strategies are used to reach and to hide this goal at the same time. My hypothesis is, that a
shift of perspective, from the imagined to the imagining, that means from the representations to the
producers of the representations, is indeed very fruitful and opens up new spaces for political
intervention.
I hereby draw on the Critical Whiteness Theory, which in the past two decades arose in the context
of Gender Studies, Black Studies and Postcolonial Studies. While Critical Whiteness Studies
managed to establish itself in the academic landscape of the United States, in Germany one could
until recently hardly find any publications regarding this topic at all. Only in the last years, a
monograph7 and several anthologies8 to Whiteness/Weißsein9 in Germany have been published.
I comprehend the images of black people employed by charitable white German NGOs as a
discourse and as part of a wider discourse.10 A discourse on the 'Third World'11, on the concept of
development and on Self and Other in a wider context. I understand discourse as a practise and as a
space, which is limiting what is speakable, what is considered as truth and where knowledge is
generated. Following Goudge (2003: 120), I believe that social as well as material inequalities are
created and reflected in discourse. Here, I am not so much interested in how this discourse came
into existence, but rather what truths are created and how it is yielding power relations (see Ziai
2004: 172f). Having analysed already the textual, respectively the visual level of this discourse, I
consider the Critical Whiteness Theorie(s) as helpful to go beyond this first layer of interpretation. I
appreciate the approach to focus more strongly on power and address issues of participation, profit
and strategies. With Hall, I believe on the possibility of multiple readings of images. The analysis of
charity ads with whiteness has to therefore be understood as one suggestion of interpretation.
7 Eske Wollrad (2005): Weißsein im Widerspruch
8 e.g. Eggers, Maureen Maisha et al (eds) (2005): Masken, Mythen und Subjekte; Tißberger, Martina et al (eds)
(2006): Weiß –Weißsein – Whiteness, with earlier articles in Steyerl, Hito & Guitérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación (eds)
(2003): Spricht die Subaltern Deutsch?, and cybernomads (2004): The Black book. I am aware of the pertinence of
black German contributions to the topic in the last 25 years, namely May Ayim, Dagmar Schultz and Katharina
Oguntoye, but locate the starting point of a wider interest of both black and white German authors – who are with
very few exceptions women – in the last few years.
9 There is a discussion going on within the German discourse, which term to use best. While some authors (e.g.
Walgenbach or Tißberger) stay with the American-English term whiteness as in their eyes there is no appropriate
translation and the term weißsein can be understood as essentialising, others (e.g. Arndt) plead for a separate
German term to point out the differences to the American situation (see Wollrad 2005: 48ff). Again others (e.g.
Wollrad) who use the term whiteness when talking about the American context and the term weißsein when talking
about Germany. It seems that the term weißsein has been established as the most acknowledged terminology. As I
am writing in English, I will use the term whiteness in this essay. However, I am aware of the specific German
situation (tabooing German colonialism, missing of Postcolonial Studies and Black Studies, taboo of term 'race';...).
10 The apparently beneficial discourses on aid have not to be seen as in a vacuum (Goudge 2003: 12), but embedded in
a system of production of knowledge and meaning which transgresses boundaries of culture, politics, religion, law
and media. It is important to clarify from which position charities talk. It is not only a privileged position, but
charities have to be considered as an instance of morality within this privileged position.
11 I am not happy with the terms 'Third World' and 'First World', as they include hierarchies on the one hand and
suggest homogeneous groups of countries. Due to the lack of alternatives, however, I use the terms in quotation to
demonstrate that I question their concepts.
4
Following Dhawan and Castro Varela (2003: 280) I believe that a political localisation clarifies that
the subject position of the author stands in direct correlation with the location from where s/he
intervenes intellectually. Especially writing about such delicate topics as racism or whiteness, it is
indispensable that I position myself and clarify my background.12 I consider it a privilege and a
difficulty to have to position myself. It is a privilege, because as a white, male, middle class,
heterosexual author, I am usually not expected to speak about my background. Rather, it is widely
not questioned that we (white males) speak and write about everything as if from an objective
perspective. It is a difficulty, because unlike other authors, I can neither argue via my race nor via
my gender that the topic of whiteness is important for me to approach because of my suppressed
identity.13 The only white man whose political localisation to whiteness I came across was Richard
Dyer (1997), who also argues via the structural vicinity of homosexuals as oppressed to black
people as oppressed.
Growing up in an almost exclusively white quarter of a West-German town, and being raised in a
middle class, Christian environment, the “drip drip effect of racialised ideas of superiority and
inferiority” (Goudge 2003: 42) strongly shaped my thinking and was a taboo at the same time.
During my education, I only learned to recognise racism “in individual sets of meanness” and
“never in invisible systems” (McIntosh 1997: 98). I profited unconsciously, and still profit – in so
many cases still unconsciously – from the structural, material and psychological privileges of
whiteness as well as masculinity. Having had – partly initiated through my parents – past
involvements in white dominated 'development cooperation' and international youth exchange,
backpacking experience in the 'Third World' and studies in anthropology, in short a left-wingish,
liberal background, I was only reassured that 1) all the people are the same and 2) racism is a
problem of others and not mine. Only in recent years through contact with black people and black
writing, I (partly) acknowledged in which bleb I am living, how I myself am racist, from which
power structures I am benefiting in my daily life and how I – alongside the white dominant society
– manage to deny these very structures.
Keeping my position in mind, I argue from a political standpoint, from which all acknowledged
injustice should be fought against because it is injustice.14 In this sense I am following Wollrad
(2005: 25) and regard this academic work not as intellectual stimulation, but rather as a contribution
to a political fight for which the amelioration of living conditions of all and concerned and the
attempt to destroy injustice are the goals.
The billboard advertisements of charities are on the one hand the major topic of this essay and were
the original motivation to write it. On the other hand, they serve representatively as an example for
the white liberal discourse. In order to analyse them with whiteness, I am discussing in the first
12 I understand this self-positioning not as something which is preceding this work. Instead, I consider it as an integral
part of it, which justifies its length.
13 see Wollrad (2005: 182)
14 see Kappeler (1994: 77), in Wollrad (2005: 182)
5
chapter its concepts and characteristics and explain where I see the merits and the limits of the
current Critical Whiteness debate. In chapter II, I extend this approach by depicting Roland Barthes'
theory of mythologies. I relate it to the debate and demonstrate how his semiological method can be
made fruitful as an analytical foundation to whiteness. A short excursus about post-colonial global
politics and economy forms the transition to the last chapter, in which I am applying the theoretical
results of the former chapters to my example of the charity ads.
Chapter I: Whiteness
“...the subject is extremely difficult to talk about because
many white people don´t feel powerful or as they have
privileges that others do not. It is sort of asking fish to notice
water or birds to discuss air.” (Frances E. Kendall 200115)
definition and characteristics of whiteness
To speak about whiteness, it first needs to be defined. Browsing through the books and articles of
Critical Whiteness Studies, I realised that a whole range of different definitions is used. I understand
whiteness first of all as an analytical category to examine power relationships. It is based on a
racialised categorisation of the world whose initiating force it is at the same time (Wollrad 2005:
21). It considers itself normative, however disavowing the very fact. Whiteness is guaranteeing a
subject status to people it considers white (Wollrad 2005: 52f). It has to be viewed as a flexible
category, which was constructed by a political motivation, it has to be reconstructed and can be
gained, lost or bought. As it is not a natural category, it carries the notion of becoming (dt.
geworden) (Wollrad 2005: 37, 60, 80, 127, Arndt 2005b: 343, 351). Whiteness functions
independently from self perception and beyond the institutional level (Arndt 2005b: 343). Wollrad
(2005: 127) understands whiteness as a relational category which has no essence in itself. I agree
with her that it takes shape in contrast to non-whites and has to be seen in relation to other
analytical categories such as gender, class and sexuality. However, I would argue with Frankenberg
(1997: 632, italics in original) that “whiteness does have content inasmuch as it generates norms,
ways of understanding history, ways of thinking about self and other, and even ways of thinking
about the notion of culture itself.” A particular characteristic of whiteness is that it is widely not
viewed as a relevant category at all or is simply perceived as a-paradigmatic (Wollrad 2005: 125 et
al). The analysis of whiteness has to therefore pay increased attention to the invisible normality
which whiteness is creating (Arndt 2005a: 27, Arndt 2005b: 346). The last key characteristic of my
15 http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/beginnings/Kendall.htm
6
definition of whiteness is that it is a relatively privileged location (Wollrad 2005: 127). Relatively,
in the sense that there is to be considered a hierarchical social strata within the category white, with
hegemonic, subordinated, marginal and complicit whitenesses.16 White privilege yields “certain
identities, attitudes and points of view” (Frankenberg 1996a: 56, quoted in Wollrad 2005: 127,
translation TK) and includes a wide range of immaterial as well as material advantages. Wollrad's
(2005: 38ff) distinction between whiteness as something (power or dominance) and whiteness as
somebody (ambivalent white identity) includes not only the totality of the white system of power –
which is often difficult to grasp – but simultaneously redirects the view to the white subject as
profiting political actor.17 The power of whiteness is created and manifested through an interplay
between individual daily life of the white subject and a wider cultural, legal, political, economical
and social context of the white collective. In contrast to the hegemonic research about racism in
Germany where both, the concept of bodies as social construction and the occupation with
responsible perpetrators of racism is erased18, Critical Whiteness Theory clearly names responsible
perpetrators of social inequalities: the white subject.
the white subject19
White people are setting standards of humanity20 and as they see themselves as the apex of
'civilisation', they consider white as the measurement of what is human (Goudge 2003: 49). White
people are defining normality and consider themselves neutral at the same time (McIntosh 292f).
They are experiencing and portraying themselves and the people of their 'race' as individual and
normal and meanwhile fix the rest of the world as their property and make it immobile (Arndt
2005b: 340). Although they presuppose a white superiority (Wollrad 2005: 119, Goudge 2003: 19),
they declare all people as equal and through the filter of colour-blindness21 are unable to see
particularities and power differences (Arndt 2005b: 340, Goudge 2003: 20, 49), as well as unable to
name causes and consequences of processes of racialisation (El Tayeb 2005: 8). White people deny
16 Transferring Bob Connell's (2005: 77ff) idea of the multiplicity of masculinities to the concept of whiteness. He
argues that not all men fit in the category of hegemonic masculinity, but still enjoy material and immaterial
privileges through the partriarchal dividend.
17 Several authors (Wollrad 2005: 34, 84; Morrison 1995: 74, Fanon 1982: 60, 224, Barthes 2000: 155, Sandoval 1997:
89, 98f) consider that also the white subject is fixed in the racialised system and suffers because of hierarchies. I am
aware of this fact, however I would regard it as extremely dangerous to talk about white disadvantages of the system
without mentioning the wages of whiteness. This would come close to the psychoanalytical strategy of positioning
oneself as the victim. Although I understand the argument that white people as well would have an interest in
abolishing the rigid system, I hereby focus on the white subject as gaining through whiteness.
18 Wollrad (2005: 117-124) reviews that white German research about racism tried with the cultural turn to replace the
focus on race with the focus on culture. It contributed at the same time to the process of making white power
invisible.
19 I turned the decision over in my mind, whether to use the term 'white people' or the term 'we'. By using the term 'we',
I would impose a notion of delinquency on all readers which is not intentional. However, using the term 'white
people', it may seem that I distance myself from this group and objectify my own position as researcher. This is not
the aim.
20 Standards by which white people are bound to succeed and others are bound to fail.
21 Colour blindness is understood in dominant German discourse as anti-racist (El Tayeb 2005: 8). Morrison argues
that ignoring race is understood as graceful (in Arndt 2005b: 347).
7
their privileges and their position of power and disavow their history and involvement in
colonialism, imperialism and neo-imperialism (Nghi Ha 2005: 105, Arndt 2005b: 25, Wollrad 2005:
126) and their material as well as their psychological dependency on the Other (Tißberger 2006:
88). At the same time, they consider themselves as the only subject of history and have been taught
to not see themselves as oppressor (McIntosh 292). Despite all that, white people position
themselves as powerless victims (Goudge 2003: 50).
privileges
Resulting from this particular position, white people profit from a whole range of privileges. Peggy
McIntosh was addressing this topic for the first time in 1988. She listed 46 white “unearned assets”
(McIntosh 1997: 291), which she encountered in her daily life. This list has since then been
extended by many authors. It includes practical and public as well as psychological privileges,
material as well as immaterial ones.22 I want to keep in mind two important aspects of the
discussion around privileges. First, McIntosh distinguishes between two kinds of privileges. One
kind “one would want for everybody in a just society [... and which] make [one] feel at home in the
world” and the other kind which “give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive [...
and which allow one] to escape penalties or dangers which others suffer” (McIntosh 1997: 295). I
consider this distinction important, especially as I have the impression that many authors in Critical
Whiteness Studies refer to privileges only according to McIntosh's first definition. Second,
Tißberger argues that privileges have the function in the system of whiteness to define what is
considered 'normal': “[T]hose who do not profit from them [the privileges] appear as outside the
norm. Their placement outside the norm renders them as 'different'. The difference of those outside
the norm is necessary to maintain the normality inside; in other words, the term 'normality' would
not make sense without conceptions of what is 'not normal' or of ab-normality” (Tißberger 2006:
87).
Whereto with the concept of whiteness?
In the US American Critical Whiteness Studies, two fractions can be distinguished. “The new
abolitionists” on the one hand, and the “Critical Pedagogues” on the other (Wollrad 2005: 38f).
While the former, represented most renownedly through Noel Ignatiev and David Roedinger takes
side for a materialistic approach. Their goal is the abolishment of whiteness. The latter's approach is
considered ethnographic. All the authors I was quoting so far consider themselves to be “Critical
Pedagogues”. Following Wollrad (2005: 40, translation TK) their goal is “to mark whiteness in
order to take away the status of being 'aparadigmatic'. By acknowledging and positioning whiteness
as integral component of dynamics of racialisation, it cannot act any more as the signature for
22 For a detailed list see McIntosh (1997: 293/4), Wollrad (2005: 193/4).
8
humanity as such.” Through strategies of marking, deconstructing, de-essentialising, historicising
and analysing whiteness, its power, its hegemony and the social inequalities which it creates are
deliberately challenged (Piesche 2005: 16f). Wollrad (2005: 21, translation TK) considers the
“decentralisation of whiteness a political act of criticising relationships of dominance.”
focus of Critical Whiteness Studies
The Critical Whiteness Studies are not to be considered as one faculty in the academic landscape.
Rather, it is an interdisciplinary approach and scholars from a wide range of Humanities and Social
Sciences are involved in this field. Accordingly, different methodologies are used – with discourse
analysis and historiography as the most prominent, while much significance is attributed to Black
knowledge production (Wollrad 2005: 33, 119). Another characteristic is the interest in subjective
experiences. One focus of study is the construction of bodies, another is the question how white
people see Self and Other. The emphasis so far is laid on the historical production of becoming
white, where inclusions and exclusions of individuals or groups are examined. In general, I would
say, the focus on the individual identity level takes turns with the focus on legal, social or political
issues of a collective on a national level. Both, however have a strong focus on daily issues. In the
German context, an astonishing high proportion of the writing about Critical Whiteness are about
academic faculties and how the power of whiteness is buttressed and manifested through knowledge
production in the academia, which thus became a “space of violence” – e.g. through silencing Black
knowledge (Kilomba 2005: 81).
critique of Critical Whiteness Studies
The main achievement of Critical Whiteness Studies, is in my opinion the shift from 'racism as a
discussion on white extremists or black people' – what Arndt (2005b: 348) refers to as the “isolation
of the problem” – to the whole of the white society. To acknowledge that whiteness is denied out of
a “putative liberal attitude” (Arndt 2005a: 27, translation TK) and that “these myths of denial” are
“not more innocuous than those of racist confessions” (Arndt 2005b: 340, translation TK) opens up
the political space to clearly name the various kinds of violences and responsibilities for it.
According to Tißberger (2006: 91) and El Tayeb (2005: 7f), it is the liberal dominant culture itself
who creates a racist atmosphere in Germany and who prohibits the relativisation of the dominant
position.23
At present, the Critical Whiteness Studies however, show some deficits. I believe that the field
where they are currently applied is too narrow and that they can be made fruitful on a larger level.
First, global issues are not addressed. With the exception of topics of migration, authors of Critical
Whiteness Studies usually remain with their writing within national boundaries. Hence, topics such
23 see colour blindness
9
as international economics or politics, or issues such as 'development' or tourism, which I consider
highly structured by racialised ideas, are missing on the agenda. Secondly, on a related issue, not
enough attention is drawn to material benefits of whiteness. Due to the strong focus on identities –
whose importance I do not want to neglect – issues such as the global distribution of wealth are not
addressed. Our present day situation where the poorest countries are predominantly inhabited by
black people and the richest countries predominantly by white people (Goudge 2003: 24) might
seem too obvious to mention. However, I would argue that it is indeed necessary to put discussions
about 'whiteness and capitalism' as well as 'whiteness and neo-liberalism' on the agenda.24 Not
talking about these relationships means to disavow that racism “is the preeminent instrument for
exploitation” (Tißberger 2006: 91). Third and last, I am missing a deeper structural analysis of how
white power is constituted. Authors of Critical Whiteness Studies focus mainly on the historical
roots of knowledge and power constellations. Issues of e.g. the invisibleness of whiteness or its
constructed neutrality are addressed, but it is not explained how they are achieved and maintained.
Merely a few writers use a psychoanalytical approach to the topic in order to give more elaborate
explanations.
whiteness and psychoanalysis
Tißberger and Kilomba are the most prominent representatives of the psychoanalytical approach
towards whiteness in Germany. They mainly draw on theories and writings of Kristeva, Fanon,
McClintock, Gilman and Butler. Analysing whiteness, they focus on six psychological strategies
how white people deal with their situation as the dominant group.
First, the strategy of denial. White behaviours that contribute to power differences, power
differences as such (“myth of sameness”25) and privileges which go along are denied in order to not
let them appear as aggression (Tißberger 2006: 91). Second, the abjection, which according to
McClintock (1995: 71) “marks the border of the Self”: What is not considered 'normal' but impure
has to be expunged (Kristeva, in Tißberger 2006: 89). Thus, the space of normality is constructed.
Third, the projection of desires, fears or own problems onto the Other stabilizes the system and
“serves the white subject's material and psychic well-being” (Tißberger 2006: 94). Four, white
people fantasise about the Other and as they have the power of representation make themselves
believe that their fantasies are “true, valid, authentic, authoritative” (Kilomba 2005: 81). Five,
through denying the own white participation in the production and profit of power relations and
through asserting 'negative' or weak aspects of the Self onto the Other whiteness is able to position
itself as a victim of the colonial system (Kilomba 2005: 80, Goudge 2003: 50). Six, however at the
same time, white people use the strategy of blaming the victim: e.g. when the Other addresses the
injustice of the system, s/he is considered as hypersensitive and too emotional (Arndt 2005b: 347,
24 Merely the journal iz3w include these topics, they however do not find their way into the Critical Whiteness Studies.
25 bell hooks (quoted in Arndt 2005b: 347)
10
Kilomba 2005: 82f). Together, these strategies allow the “white subject to look at itself as morally
ideal, correct, virtuous, honest, democratic, impartial” (Kilomba 2005: 80).
Chapter II: Barthes' Mythologies
“The literal meaning of myth is not to reflect an objective
world view; in fact it is expressed how the human
comprehends himself in his world.” (Rudolf Karl Bultmann
1941: 22, translation TK)
In the last chapter, I criticised Critical Whiteness Studies as concentrating solely on genealogies and
discourse analysis and not examining structures that underlie whiteness. Some authors mention a
“grammar” (Wollrad 2005: 19) or a “pattern” (Goudge 2003: 20), but do not point out how it can be
analysed and deconstructed. Roland Barthes offers a structural analysis of myth as a tool of
production, conservation and manifestation of power, which is used by dominant groups. One has
not to believe in all principles of structuralism to consider (parts of) his theory helpful for the
analysis of whiteness. I therefore do not consider his theory of myth as a rigid system, but as an
auxiliary tool.
The essays which Barthes collected in his book “Mythologies” (1957, first English translation in
1972) originate from a series of articles he published between 1954 and 1956. Discussing various
myths of French daily life in the first part of the book, he develops a methodology how to deal with
myths in general in his last chapter “Myth today”. I came across Barthes during my MA in
Postcolonial Studies at Goldsmith's College in London. Although I found him really fascinating, I
forgot about him again until I read a short quotation about myths in Arndt (2005b: 340). His theory
deals with strategies of dominant societies to establish an unquestioned hegemony. I therefore
consider his mythology a very fruitful approach in order to understand and deconstruct the way
whiteness is exercising power. Below, I am outlining the main ideas of Barthes' theory.
Barthes starts with defining that “myth is a type of speech” (Barthes 2000, 109)26, it “is a type of
speech chosen by history” (110). All kinds of things could be a myth. Myths carry a message and
consist of written or pictorial forms and can be analysed with semiology. Barthes draws on the
theory of semiology of his countryman de Saussure, who developed it a few decades earlier while
he was studying linguistic systems. However, according to Barthes it is not enough to simply
transfer the methods of formal science semiology from linguistics to mythology, but instead we
26 if not stated differently, all page numbers in this chapter refer to Barthes (2000)
11
have to consider ideology27- as a historical science: because mythology “studies ideas-in-forms”
(112).
Saussure's method of semiology is concerned with the relation between two terms: the signifier and
the signified28, while the former is expressing the latter. The third term, the sign, “is the associate
total of the first two terms” (113). A linguistic example might help to clarify the relation: The
signifier would be the acoustic image, e.g. the sound 'pen'. It is by definition empty. The signified
would be the concept, in this case the 'idea of a tool to write'. Only together, they constitute the sign
– the word 'pen' (113). Only when the signifier carries the meaning of the signified, we can speak
about the sign, which is then full as it has meaning. In this example, that means that the acoustic
image does not mean anything in itself until the concept is assigned to it.
Myth as “a second-order semiological system” (114), follows the same pattern as language, which
Barthes considers a “first-order semiological system”. The two systems are interlinked as in myth
the full sign of the first-order systems constitutes the signifier of the new system. In the graph, 1.-3.
relate to de Saussure's system of language; I.-III. to Barthes' system of myth. In order not to confuse
the terminology of the two systems, he names the signifier of the mythological system form, the
term signified changes to concept and the sign to signification.
Transferring this scheme to the
subject of whiteness can have the
following result. The signifier of
the first-order system is the colour
black. The signified would be an
idea
of
categorisation
that
classifies people according to their
skin colour, hence a racialisation.
As “an associate total” of the two,
I consider the racialised black
subject as the sign.
27 Barthes is not defining the term ideology clearly. I consider his vague use of terms as one of the greatest deficits of
his study. Following Ziai (2004: 70ff) I read Barthes' notion of ideology as a fixed world view that rests upon fixed
assumptions. It operates universalising, naturalising, rationalising and distorting (content as well as language) and is
at the same time not aware of its own constructedness, particularity and involvement in power structures. Barthes
examines the bourgeois ideology. I however argue that his methodology is transferable to other systems of
domination, including whiteness.
28 Barthes wrote these essays in his early writing period, which is considered strictly structuralist. He acts on the
assumption of naturalness of phenomena, thinks in binary oppositions and considers truth as objective. As a poststructuralist later on, he changed some of his viewpoints.
Barthes relies in his theory on a transcendental signified which has a constant, universal meaning. I consider it
important however, to acknowledge meaning as constructed and to take its histioricity into account. As Critical
Whiteness Studies focuses on the process of becoming and on genealogies of knowledge, it is justified to transfer
Barthes concept to whiteness while emanating from a historically constructed signified.
12
Barthes' central observation is that when the meaningful sign of the first-order system “becomes
form, the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history
evaporates, only the letter remains. There is here a paradoxical permutation in the reading
operations, an abnormal regression from meaning to form, from the linguistic sign to the mythical
signifier” (117). The form can therefore not be a symbol.29 Summarising this process, Barthes
argues that “the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters,
rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon
as they are caught by myth” (114).30
Barthes uses an example to demonstrate how the two systems are interlinked. He analyses the
image of a 'young black man in French uniform who is saluting' and considers this image as
meaning. Simultaneously, the image signifies “that France is a great Empire, that all her sons,
without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag” (116). Here, one has to consider
the second-order system: “there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black
soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness
and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier” (116). Barthes
continues that “the essential point in all this is that the form does not suppress the meaning, it only
impoverishes it, it puts it at a distance, it holds it at one's disposal. [...] The form of myth is not a
symbol: the Negro who salutes is not the symbol of the French Empire: he has too much presence,
he appears as a rich, fully experienced, spontaneous, innocent, indisputable image. But at the same
time this presence is tamed, put at a distance, made almost transparent; it recedes a little, it becomes
the accomplice of a concept which comes to it fully armed, French imperiality: once made use of, it
becomes artificial” (118).
Returning to whiteness, the sign of the first system– the racialised black subject – carries meaning.
Emptied by becoming form, it results in the de-historicised, racialised black subject. Hence, the
form (perceived as black subject) has strong similarities to the first-order signifier (black) as it is
deprived of its meaning, it is impoverished. In the second-order system of this example, I suggest to
use white superiority, which is based on a hierarchical order, as the concept.31 The outcome is
29 an object that carries as meaning in itself
30 The foundation of Barthes' theory is the division of language into a language-object and a metalanguage. He defines
that the language-object is original and myth can get “hold of it in order to built its system” (115). Myth, however, is
using a metalanguage, “in which one talks about the first” (115).
I criticise this division and argue with Foucault, that all phenomena, including language, are constructed. While
Barthes argues that everything can become mythified, Foucault would argue that everything is myth. (see Bendix
2006). In my opinion it is possible to still use Barthes' theory, although I am not in accord with his definition of
language.
31 The idea to use white superiority as a concept derives on the one hand from the results of the visual analysis of
charity images, and on the other hand from reading about whiteness in general. In either example, issues of
superiority and inferiority play a major role. As Barthes argues that a mythologist has to be able to name concepts in
order to decipher a myth (see below), I propose for the use of white superiority as a concept in this model.
In my eyes, there is an important difference to note between the nature of the concept and the nature of the signified.
In the linguistic system, the signified is associated haphazardly with the signifier. In myth however, an intentional
13
finally a signification, which is a de-historicised, racialised, inferior, black subject. As the dehistorisation nullifies the process of racialisation, what is eventually left for the viewer to perceive32
is the inferior black subject.
Barthes is discussing three major effects which myths achieve: 1. the naturalisation of the concept,
2. the erasing of the dominant name and 3. the de-politisation.
1. naturalisation
Unlike what one might first suggest, myth is not hiding anything. Rather, the concept, taking over
the form, distorts “what is full, the meaning” (122). Its history is deprived. This leads to a
paradoxical situation “in the mythical signifier: its form is empty but present, its meaning is absent
but full” (124). This duplicity (full meaning + empty form) of the signifier is finally responsible for
how the signification is perceived, namely as a notification or a statement of fact. In my example,
neither the process of racialisation nor the process of de-historisation is visible in the signification.
The inferiority of blackness seems as a fact and not as a product of ideology. The intention, by
which the myth is defined, is “frozen, purified, made absent by [its] literal sense” (124, italics in
original). The fact makes the intention seem innocent. The strength of the myth is visible here, as it
is playing on the analogy between the two components of the mythical signifier: the meaning and the always partly motivated - form.
Concentrating on the role of the mythologist, Barthes proposes tools how to decipher a myth. Her or
his goal would be to understand the distortion. Understanding that myth is not hiding something,
but that it is an inflexion, it is possible to unfold its concept. Focusing on the mythical signifier as a
whole (meaning + form) one is able “to connect a mythical schema to a general history, to explain
how it corresponds to the interests of a definite society, in short to pass from semiology to ideology”
(128f).
In a first-order semiological system, the “intention of the myth is too obscure to be efficacious, or it
is too clear to be believed”, in a second-order system, however, myth is able “to escape this
dilemma: driven to either unveil or liquidate the concept, it will naturalize it” (129). This
transformation from history to nature is according to Barthes of central importance. The mythassignment is the case as hierarchies have to be transported.
32 Barthes notes here that the concept appeals to a certain audience and has to be appropriated by the reader/listener. I
appreciate this acknowledgement of historical and societal circumstances and the negation of the existence of
universal myths. As Barthes is considering histioricity, in this case, he can be seen as a post-structuralist.
A very interesting question, which Barthes is not answering is the question why readers of a myth are associating a
concept with a form. In my opinion, the concept needs driving forces behind it to define, or to create a link between
a the form and the concept in the first place.
I consider methods of analysing repetitions in a discourse through discourse analysis and becoming aware of
genealogies important approaches to answer this question. Through historicising whiteness it becomes clear that the
myth of white superiority is a historical product of the last centuries. People around the world learned to appropriate
it, as it is not understood in itself.
14
consumers therefore understand the intention of the concept as factual and without any “interest in
the matter: what causes mythical speech to be uttered is perfectly explicit, but it is not read as a
motive, but as a reason” (129). Back to the example of French imperiality, Barthes explains that
“everything happens as if the picture [of the young black soldier] naturally conjured up the concept
[French imperiality], as if the signifier gave a foundation to the signified: the myth exists from the
precise moment when French imperiality achieves the natural state” (129f, italics in original).
The trick of naturalisation is not necessarily meant to leave a lasting impression. Barthes assumes
that its action is “stronger than the rational explanations which may later belie it” (130). The
represented causality is artificial or contingent, but buttressed by its naturalisation. Myth is not
considered innocent speech because it tries to hide motives and intentions, but because they are
made to appear natural.
What is be to remarked here, is that first of all, myth is motivated. According to Barthes, myth is not
developing accidentally, but because of an intention.33 Whiteness has to be seen from this
perspective, too. However, if the myth of white superiority would clearly state its aims, it would be
too easy to see through it and both, oppressed and oppressor, would unmask it rapidly. Instead,
whiteness is made invisible by transforming its intention into a fact. Practically speaking, it pictures
an assumed historically achieved supremacy – e.g. economic-political dominance – as a natural
characteristic of white superiority34. The signifier of black inferiority seems to naturally conjure up
white superiority, it seems to buttress the concept. Whiteness as an interpretation of the world,
which entails a distribution of privileges and power, manages through myth to appear as a natural
system.
As Barthes described, whiteness builds its power on the direct impact of myth, as it is rationally not
difficult to dismantle it later on. I would argue, however, that in addition it is the constant repetition
which makes one believe the myth, the so called “drip drip effect” (Goudge 2003: 42).
2. erasing of the name
Barthes is analysing the dominant position of the bourgeoisie in the French society. He observes
that while it is quite easy to name its role and power in the economical sphere, the bourgeoisie has
difficulties acknowledging itself as political fact. However, “[a]s an ideological fact, it completely
disappears: the bourgeoisie has obliterated its name in passing from reality to representation, from
economic man to mental man” (138). Barthes considers this invisibility a very important
characteristic of dominant positions and argues that myth is a central tool in order to reach it. With
33 I understand the term 'intention' not as something, can be directly attributed to one person. It is therefore not
subjective. Rather, I consider statements as intentional that follow one direction.
34 The dominant perception of European history as one continuous line from Ancient Greece to the European Union
for example, buttress the idea of natural white superiority.
15
this background, I argue that whiteness behaves structurally the same way. While the economic
power is clearly visible and simultaneously reason for pride and justification for superiority, playing
a dominant role in post-colonial global politics is hardly admitted by white governments. On the
ideological level, white power simply disappears. In particular, links between the economical or
political sphere and the ideological one are silenced or strictly denied (e.g. racism as instrument for
exploitation).
Barthes discusses that the power of the bourgeois social class is made invisible. I argue that
whiteness can be seen analogue. Both names disappear. The dominant culture leaves no space for
another morality, another art or another culture. Ideologically, so Barthes, all other groups or classes
in society have to borrow from the dominant class. This allows the dominant ideology to make itself
appear as universal. Barthes continues that it “can therefore spread over everything and in so doing
lose its name without risk: no one here will throw this name of bourgeois [or white] back at it”
(139). I would argue that the erasing of the name whiteness achieved, as a result, that it is harder to
denominate actors and to allocate responsibilities. One example of this phenomenon is that racism
is usually not discussed as a specific white problem, but in the context of universal xenophobia.
Another example would be that white people are not accused for institutional racism as they are not
considered responsible for the (natural) system. Following Barthes, the anonymity of power plays
an important role in the (inter)national “unwritten norms of interrelationship” (140). Whiteness is
thereby able to peacefully live neutralised without attracting attention from intellectuals or
resistance from oppositionals.
Barthes argues that “the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more
naturalized they become. [...] It is therefore by penetrating the intermediate classes that the
bourgeois ideology can most surely lose its name” (140). Hence, examining representations through
which whiteness manifests itself is extremely important as this process of trying to get rid of its
name is the central process of the dominant class in transforming (historic) reality into a (natural)
image.
3. de-politisation
Barthes' conclusion that myth has primarily de-politicising qualities is an extremely important
cognition for the analysis of whiteness. With the de-historicised, racialised, inferior, black subject
as signification, the myth of white superiority simply states facts instead of giving genealogies.
Barthes explains: “In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the
complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away with all the
dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it organizes a world which is
without contradictions because it has no depth, [...] things appear to mean something in themselves”
16
(143). The power of whiteness is based on the connection of visual characteristics (e.g. skin colour)
with an ideological system of hierarchical classifications (e.g. racialisation). However, through the
process of making the ideological level invisible, the message that white racial superiority is natural
remains. To reach this goal, whiteness is not only de-politicising and de-historicising, but has to
essentialise to a high degree. This is achieved for example through stereotypisation.
Barthes argues that only the oppressor is able to use myth to de-politicise.35 The oppressed have no
possibility to naturalise their history through myth as they do not have the means to implement it.
This means that it is not important to have access to metalanguage, what Barthes considers a precondition, but instead to have access to resources to diffuse myths through discourse. I would argue
therefore that the oppressed could have myths, just not the power to circulate them.36 Yet, I agree
with Barthes on another difference why myth is rather utilised by the dominant group: the
oppressed are not aiming at an eternalisation of the as-is-state, but rather have an interest in its
transformation. Whiteness is able to use myth, as it has an interest in portraying society and
international order as immobile and eternalise present power relations.
rhetorical forms
Barthes outlined rhetorical forms, which he considered important tools of myth. Sandoval
compares them to Fanon's methodology of the oppressed and calls these forms together the “rhetoric
of supremacy”37 (Sandoval 1997: 86). A common strategy of these rhetorical figures is the
transformation of history into essences. They make the dominant subject generate and accept “a
multilevel, profound alienation-in-consciousness as a natural state of being” (Sandoval 1997: 96).
Their goal is the immobilisation of the world. In order to reach it, however, “they must suggest and
mimic an universal order which has fixated once and for all the hierarchy of possessions” (155).
Another goal of myth is that all humans should recognise themselves in images that have been
beforehand fixed and rigidified by myth itself. Whiteness with its claim to universality shares these
defined goals. As whiteness builds on a system of racialised categorisation and power relations and
as it focuses on essences, Barthes' rhetorical forms can be applied to its analysis.
35 His argument is based on the distinction of language object and metalanguage, as according to him the the
oppressed have no access to metalanguage. As I disagree with this distinction and consider both kind of languages
as constructed, I modify the argument.
36 see also Amin (1989: 104)
37 Sandoval compares Barthes and Fanon and realises that they have a lot in common. She supposes that Barthes must
have known Fanon's Black Skin White Mask, since he wrote his Mythologies seven years later (Sandoval 1997: 106
footnote 12). Fanon focuses more strongly on the psychological consequences of colonialism on the colonised;
whereas Barthes concentrates on the strategies of the dominant colonising society. I consider Fanon highly
important for both the development of Postcolonial Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies. However, as in
Postcolonial Studies, Fanon is frequently referenced and Barthes is widely unknown (Sandoval 1997: 96), and
especially as I purposely study the strategies of the dominant society, I set my focus in this work on Barthes'
Mythologies. I agree with Sandoval, calling Barthes one of the masterminds of Critical Whiteness Studies (Sandoval
1997: 96f).
17
First, the inoculation. This figure is a protection “against invasion by difference” (Sandoval 1997:
88). It functions through “admitting the accidental evil” within the dominant group, and thereby
“conceal[ing] its principal evil. One immunizes the contents of the collective imagination by means
of a small inoculation of acknowledged evil” (150). Sandoval adds that the inoculation works
homeopathically. According to Arndt (2004: 3), through this figure, difference is acknowledged in
order not to have to question whiteness as a whole. She argues that “inoculation manifests itself in
the so called “colour blindness”, which is built on the tendency that Whites neither notice their
White cultural identity, nor reflect or mark it” (Arndt 2004: 3, translation TK).
Second, the privation of History. “Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all History. In it,
history evaporates” (151). Myth is not questioning the root or the genealogy of its content, but
rather portrays it as eternal. According to Sandoval the estrangement from history “deprives
(Western) consciousness of any responsibility for what has and will become”, it creates and even
encourages a “passivity-in-consciousness” (Sandoval 1997: 89). This passivity prevents the
dominant subject to recognise her/his own ability of intervention and therefore de-politicises
her/him.
With whiteness, the white history of dominance and its present power position is neglected and a
neutral view of history free of power relations is constructed. Simultaneously, the Other is deprived
of her/his own history. Through this privation of history, whiteness achieves therefore a
naturalisation and through the depersonalisation diverts attention from actors. With a quote from
British Prime Minister Blair, Goudge demonstrates both aspects: “These forces [modernisation]
driving the future do not stop at national boundaries. Do not respect tradition. They wait for no one
and no nation. They are universal” (Blair 1999, quoted in Goudge 2003: 164).
Third, identification is the reduction of all Otherness to sameness. Where the Other cannot be
denied or ignored, the dominant society tries to imagine her/him as same. Barthes however regards
the strategy of exoticising as an emergency strategy when this reduction is not possible: “The Other
becomes a pure object, a spectacle, a clown. Relegated to the confines of humanity, he no longer
threatens the security of the home” (152). Through exoticism, a location for the dominant
imagination is created. Simultaneously, this rhetorical form permits the dominant “subject to
situate and “identify” itself as living at the center and best of all that yet is” (Sandoval 1997: 91).
I would argue that exoticising is a common strategy of whiteness. As a result it constructs a white
centre with various peripheries around it, in which for example black people find themselves
represented as objects. However, with the form of identification, Barthes goes one step further than
simply discussing exoticism. This form implies a constant rearrangement of the imagined locations
of centre and periphery through strategies of assimilation and rejectionism. Not to forget, however,
is that whiteness keeps the power to decide with which strategy to encounter the Other.
Four, tautology is the definition of “like by like” (152), e.g. “History is History” or “Truth is Truth”
(Sandoval 1997: 92). Barthes argues that this strategy is commonly used in emotional situations of
18
crisis, e.g. fear, anger and sadness, in which the dominant society is lacking explanations. It is
perceived as containing causality, whereby meaning is merely frozen into place. This strategy,
however, has to “take refuge behind the argument of authority” (153).
Products of historical events are made invisible through whiteness, thus causal explanations
disappear or are reduced. Here, Barthes' division of myth into the first-order system and the secondorder system comes into play again. While in my previous example, the concept (white superiority)
is made absent, a characteristic of the signifier (black) is explained with its signified (racialisation).
Concluding, black people are poor because they are categorised as black; or white people say the
truth because they are categorised as white.38 The authority Barthes talks about, is produced in the
case of whiteness through an establishment of a pseudo-objective science as well as through the
dominant discourse.
Five, neither-norism, is used as a rhetorical form to move between two opposites and reject both at
the same time. “[R]eality is first reduced to analogues; then it is weighed, finally, equality having
been ascertained, it is got rid of” (153). The effect of this strategy is an activation of an
“independent “neutrality” in consciousness” (Sandoval 1997: 92), as well as an immobilization of
values, of life and of destiny: “a final equilibrium [...where] one no longer needs to choose, but only
to endorse” (153). Sandoval concludes that an apparently higher moral stance results as a
consequence. Through the subject's seeming neutrality the dominant order is manifested and
supported.
Barthes explains with this rhetorical form one way through which whiteness achieves the neutral
stance that so many writers comment on. Practically, this form is often applied through the strategy
of silence. By not tying oneself down to one position white people are able to construct themselves
as morally neutral and of higher morality. Wollrad (2005: 178f, translation TK) argues that through
this “retentiveness – gladly constructed as abandonment of power – power is also reconstituted.”
Silence as “aggressive pattern of refusal” (Arndt 2005b: 347) leads ethically as well as politically to
an approval – and in the case of whiteness as well to the profit – of unequal power relations. Finally,
neither-norism is a tool to de-politicise people, to render them passive.
Six, the quantification of quality. With this figure, myth is able to economise intelligence through
the reduction of quality to quantity. Thus, reality is understood more cheaply. Values or even reality
itself are judged “according to the quantity of effects produced [... which] are understood to be
measure, degree, depth, and magnitude of goodness” (Sandoval 1997: 92f).
Barthes as well as Sandoval keep their explanations for this rhetorical form quite short, so I have
difficulties to transfer it to whiteness. In my eyes, whiteness developed in a strong relation to
capitalism. Hence, it adopted the values of higher, further, faster and uses them as units of
measurement and as norms at the same time. Many characteristics which whiteness defines as
different are therefore measured by these criteria of quantification.
38 Kant's phrase “The reason, to presume Nigger and Whites as basic races, is evident in itself” (quoted in Wollrad
2005: 19), is a prominent example of such a tautology.
19
Seven, equivalent to the tautology, the statement of fact is directed towards “a self-evident
appearance of eternity” (154f). It focuses on the essence of the dominant ideology: on
“universalism, [on] the refusal of any explanation, [and on] an unalterable hierarchy of the world”
(154). The use of proverbs is a common form of this figure; its foundation is common sense.
Consequently, it represents the reality of the dominant subject as the only existing reality and
therefore encourages her/him to speak with certainty. This speech appears as “the most innocuous,
innocent, and straightforward containers for common sense, [it however] contain[s] all the force of
supremacism (Sandoval 1997: 94).
In this last rhetorical form, Barthes addresses two important strategies of whiteness. First, the
transformation of an opinion into a fact, something subjective into something objective. Second, the
arrangement of these putative neutral facts as common sense. Myth can easily spread through
common sense and it is again the dominant order, whiteness, which is controlling this tool. Verbal
resistance to a sentence such as “we all know that black people are lazy” is much more difficult as
to a sentence such as “my personal opinion is that black people are lazy”, as one has to argue
against an imagined and auxiliary “we all”.
role of the mythologist
According to Barthes, a mythologist has to “be able to name concepts” (120f) in order to decipher
its myth. As the signified is quantitatively poorer than the signifier, it can have a whole variety of
signifiers. Without this repetition, it would indeed be difficult to decipher a myth. I do not want to
limit the myth of white superiority to advertisements of German charities, but argue that it is
recurrent in German (and other Western countries') daily life: in media, culture, politics as well as in
interpersonal relationships.39 The signifier vary each time, the signified however stays the same.
Foucault's methodology of discourse analysis – which Critical Whiteness Studies, among others,
make use of – offers helpful tools for the mythologist to point out repetitions.
The mythologist is easily able to justify her/his activities in deciphering myths as s/he is unveiling
an tool for the establishment of power relations, which s/he considers unjust. Still, deciphering is
only possible by understanding the rhetoric of supremacy, Sandoval (1997: 86) argues, as it is this
very rhetoric which “structures and naturalizes the unjust relations of exchange that arise within and
between colonizer and colonized communities.” I understand the deconstruction of whiteness in this
framework. As it is addressing inequalities and has an emancipatory approach, I consider it with
Barthes as a political act of resistance. The mythologist therefore “participate[s] in the making of
the world” (156, italics TK).40 The mythologist, however, stays excluded as s/he cuts her/himself
39 Prominent events in the last year were e.g. the festival 'African Village' in the zoo in Augsburg (2005), the dance
show 'Africa, Africa' in Berlin (2006) and the reality TV show 'Wie die Wilden' (like savages) in sat1 (2006).
40 making in the sense of transforming in contrast to eternalising
20
“off from all the myth-consumers” (156). Barthes argues that the mythologist has to estrange
her/himself from society in order to liberate its myth.
Sandoval remarks that Fanon is less pessimistic than Barthes about the subject engaging in the
methodology of the oppressed, as s/he forms part of a “new, original, revolutionary cadre that is
cross-racial, cross-class, and cross-nation” (Sandoval 1997: 101). Fanon therefore does not stop in
his methodology at the steps of (1) reading and (2) deconstructing signs of power, but encourages
the mythologist to (3) remake “signs in the interest of renegotiating power”; (4) to commit “to an
ethical position through which all signs and their meanings are organized in order to bring about
egalitarian power relations” and (5) to focus on the “mobilization of the four previous technologies
in differential movement through mind, body, social body, sign, and meaning” (Sandoval 1997:
101).
Excursus41
The exploitation of the 'Third World' by the 'First World' did not end with the independence of the
former colonies. During the last decades the economical exploitation continued, accompanied by
politics of betrayal and dominance. Countries in Africa, Asia and South America became cue balls
of the super powers in the cold war. During the same time, a pseudo-democratic global system of
political and economical organisations has been created in which the predominantly white countries
manifested their power. I do not want to lump together the different organisations such as the UNO,
the World Bank, the IWF or the WTO, however what they have in common is an unprivileged and
disadvantaged position of 'Third World' governments and social movements.
Interestingly, charities and the 'development industry' arose during the same time with these
institutions.42 In the last decades, Africa became poorer, not richer as suggested by the charities
(Jakobeit 2001: 449, Goudge 2003: 14). The notion of 'development' which is promoted by the
charities is a single-edged picture and detracts attention from a major part of relations between the
'donor' and the 'receiver'.
While the exploitation of raw materials, the trafficking of weapons, a non-sustainable lifestyle, the
debt dependency or the exploitation of the global division of labour (e.g. sweat shops)43 are topics
which are occasionally addressed in the dominant discourse (however never in charity ads), I want
to remind that the current exploitation goes deeper than that. They are often directly related to and
caused by the unjust global system. Through neoliberalism, a whole range of goods, including
water, seed, pharmaceuticals and intellectual properties have been capitalised. By and large
41 In order to visualise some of my arguments in the following chapter, an excursus about current global economy and
politics is helpful.
42 Philipp (2006) however argues that especially the Christian charities have a history, reaches back to colonial times
as missionaries were active in comparable fields: e.g. missionary schools or missionary hospitals.
43 see e.g. http://www.saubere-kleidung.de
21
companies and the predominantly white populations of the 'First World' gain. With three short
examples, I want to address different fields which are strongly influenced by international politics.
Analogue to the profit, white people gain from racism is perceived 'normal' (Strohschein 2005:
507), the profit white people gain from neoliberalism is rendered invisible.
1. AIDS medicine
In the TRIPS agreement of the WTO member countries, intellectual property rights are regulated.
One area that is highly affecting people in poor countries is the patenting of medicines and health
care. Bound through bilateral TRIPS-plus agreements, governments of 'Third World' countries have
to forbid local companies to produce patented medicine generically (see Oxfam 2002) and make it
publicly available for a fraction of the price they are sold now. 'First World' corporations, including
e.g. German Boehringer Ingelheim, who produce antiretroviral medicines charge excessive prices
and are according to TAC (2003) “directly responsible for the premature, predictable and avoidable
deaths of people living with HIV/AIDS.” Jakobeit (2001: 449) argues that the lapse of whole
generations of employable people – beside the human tragedies – does enormous harm to local
economies.
2. biotechnology
Shiva (undated) argues that through these very patent regulations, global corporations are able to
take over local food processing. Biotechnological mutated seed, which was only possible to be
developed through bio-piracy, plays an important role in making small farmers dependent on global
corporations. Through the capitalisation of food production, a shift to the exportation of cash crops
“has reduced [local] food security” (Shiva undated).
3. food surplus dumping
A third example is the exportation of European and North-American food surplus. The agricultural
sector is highly protected and extremely subsidised in both the EU44 and the US. Poor countries
around the world that applied for loans from the World Bank, have been forced to open their
domestic markets through structural adjustment programs. Through abolished import taxes,
enforced by the WTO since 1995, European and North-American companies are now able to sell
their subsidised agricultural products for a fraction of the domestic price (Sharma 2005). They
therewith destroy local markets and intensify dependencies. According to Shiva (undated) not only
local business, but also bio-diversity is wiped out by floods of food imports.
Surplus dumping is not only practised by corporations, it is a favourite strategy of international
charities, US AID is an example.45
Related to food distribution, I want to end this little excursus by returning to the issue of charities.
Hunger and malnutrition are recurrent images in their ads and it appears as if we live in a world of
scarcity and shortcoming. Ziegler is of another opinion when he states that with the world's current
44 The
EU
subsidised
its
agriculture
in
2001
with
41,53
billion
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/trade/subsidies/2002/10stopdumping.pdf
45 Documented in the Jihan El Tahri's Dominant7/Arte documentary: The famine business (2003).
22
Euro;
see
capacities, 12 billion people could be nourished. Hunger and its consequences are therefore caused
my the asymmetrical distribution and the destruction of food in the rich countries. Ziegler argues
that “a child which is dying of hunger today, is murdered”.46
Chapter III: Analysis of charity advertisements
“Images play a crucial role in the definition and control of
political and social power,... The supremely ideological
nature of imagery determines not only how others think about
us, but also, how we think about ourselves.” (Pratibha Parmar
quoted in Hall 1994: 14)
In this last chapter I finally return to the advertisement of charitable organisations in Germany. My
aim is to deconstruct the “pictorial architecture of power” (Pieterse 1992: 22) through
demonstrating how the charities as part of a liberal, Christian, white German society contribute with
their advertisement to a manifestation of the power of whiteness. By using whiteness as an
analytical category, I point out how the portrayed images are ensnarled in a wider system of power
relations, identity formation and global politics.
violence
Hutnyk argues that charity as a system has its share in the construction of 'underdevelopment', as
without charity, Africa47 “might not be portrayed as being so poor” (Hutnyk 1996: 53). He
recognises poverty as “possibly the major foreign trope” (Hutnyk 1996: 56), and considers charities
as responsible actors in seeking out, foregrounding and representing decay (Hutnyk 1996: viii). In
this context, I believe it is appropriate to speak about charity advertisements as a discourse which
perpetrates violence. Apart from the generation of stereotypical images, the charity industry exerts
power in defining where and what is poverty48, and who has the right to live her/his life the way
s/he wants to.49 Escobar (1995: 103f) regards the image of a poor black person as encoded with “a
46 http://www.welt.de/data/2006/01/23/835218.html, translation TK
47 Hutnyk writes in his case about the city of Calcutta, but I think it is warrantable to transfer the argument.
48 Jakobeit (2001: 448) points out that one has to distinguish between poverty and misery, as not all living conditions
that are different to Western Europe have to be automatically considered as poor. Here, the criticism of
postdevelopment has to be allowed for. The essence of this wide field of writing is according to Ziai (2004: 168) the
refusal of a Western model of 'development' and a revaluation of non-industrial societies as having equal rights to
exist. Criticisms of postdevelopment do not call for an “alternative development, but for alternatives to
development” (Ziai 2004: 168, translation TK).
49 I am aware of the criticisms against ideas of postdevelopment. Especially dangerous in my opinion is the
romantisation of non-industrial societies (see e.g. Kiely, Ray (1999): The last refuge of the Noble Savage. A critical
assessment of postdevelopment theory). However, I appreciate that questions of alternatives to the universalisation
of Western lifestyles are addressed.
23
whole economy of discourse and unequal power relations” and names it “a violence of
representation”. Using the notion of violence is often considered as exaggerated, as these
advertisements are 'only' harmless images, which simply generate donations for a good reason. This
is in my opinion belittling the consequences representations can have. Embedding these images in a
wider system of whiteness and taking Wollrad's (2005: 19, translation TK) argument into
consideration that “also fictions can have real effects”50, one has to address issues ranging from the
the viewer's intertwining in power relations, her/his privileged position and its usage, to
discriminations of Others in interpersonal contacts.
superiority – inferiority
In their advertisements, charities build on notions of a racialised system, in which “natural
inferiority or superiority” is understood to be detected in “visual evidences” (Wollrad 2005: 119,
translation TK). Through their displayed characteristics, environment, and social position, black
people are positioned as the inferior Other of the white German society. Following Said, this
process of othering contributes to the hegemony of white power (Goudge 2003: 159). In charity
posters, however, this process of rendering the Other as inferior, is reinforced by the notion of
'whites helping blacks'. Through the focus on aid, mercy and charity, white people do not learn to
see themselves as oppressor. In contrast, a one-sided dependency is suggested and buttressed
through the reduction of the black subject on deficiencies. Tißberger (2006: 89) argues that “if it
were not for the racial [...] other as inferior, there would be no whiteness [...] that can claim
superiority.” This very construction of the Self is a central aspect of the process of othering,
however it is silenced in the advertisements just as the submission of the Other. Nghi Ha (2005:
105) deems both essential strategies of the dominant German society.
Through the notion of 'development, which is frequently used in charity ads', the notion of a natural
evolution from 'un/underdeveloped' to 'developed' is strongly present (Ziai 2004: 93f). With Ziai
(2004: 167), I argue that the concept of evolution, with paternalistic politics as a consequence,
strengthens the claim for white superiority. While this very claim for white superiority has been
explained racially in colonial times, in today's charity advertisements it is naturalised and made
invisible.
invisibility
As I discussed earlier, white people are virtually absent in charity ads. They seem to have no
connection to the depicted issues. The only relationship between First World and Third World
mentioned is the charity based donor – receptor relation. Historical as well as present relations of
50 Collette Guillaumin's phrase that “Race does not exist. But it kills people.” (quoted in Arndt 2005b: 342) can be
taken as exemplary for what I have in mind with the terms fiction and effects.
24
colonialism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, exploitation, international politics, consumerism,
tourism, global cultural politics, etc. are completely lacking. By addressing merely the topic of
charitable aid and not defining it as the “soft edge of an otherwise brutal system of exploitation”
(Hutnyk 1996: ix), but as something inherently positive, a relationship of “exploitation is hidden
from sight” (Spivak 1987 in Hutnyk 2003: 26). The absence of whiteness as well as the fade-out of
its involvements in imperialism and colonialism is considered as a central strategy to neutralise the
dominant white position (Wollrad 2005: 126; Pajaczkowska, C. & Young, Lola 1992: 202). What is
characteristic about whiteness here, however, is that “its presence articulates itself via absence”
(Wollrad 2005: 31, translation TK), as even when whiteness is not mentioned, it can be
presupposed. Still, in the discussed images, white people as oppressor or aggressor have been erased
from the picture. It remains the invisible, unnamed assumption of the white subject as acting
morally responsible and merciful.
subject status
The paradoxical characteristic of whiteness (white people are missing in the discussion, but are
gaining a subject status at the same time) is clearly visible in charity ads. Through the construction
of the black Other as passive and needy, white people are constructed as active subjects. White
people are perceived as the only subjects of history: they 'develop', help and promote the history of
black people.
The white viewer who regards these advertisements, experiences this active subject position
directly, yet unconsciously. S/he has an “assumed and unquestioned right to gaze; to gaze without
acknowledging that one is a part of what is happening; to stay apart and to judge; to judge and to
invariably find something wrong or something lacking – it is this look, which travels from North to
South” (Goudge 2003: 125). Following Foucault, Mulvey et al, this voyeuristic gaze is a strong
symbol of power. It “can embarrass, humiliate, humble and shame. It can produce fear, slavery,
desire, love, hate, indifference, masochism and sadism” (Denzin 1995: 47).
privileges
White people who consume the black subject on charity ads are allowed various privileges. Partly,
they can be attributed to McIntosh's first category of privileges “one would want for everybody in a
just society” (McIntosh 1997: 295). Obtaining subject status with its positive consequences for
one's psyche, definitely belongs to this category. Another privilege of this kind is the “privilege to
speak” (Kilomba 2005: 81).
Behind the idea of white-people-helping-for-black-people's-'development' lies the privilege of
freedom of movement, which is denied to the people depicted. However, the “freedom of
25
interference” (Goudge 2003: 17), which comes along this idea, is rather to be attributed to the
category of privileges that “give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant and destructive”
(McIntosh 1997: 295). Yet, another privilege which is coherent here is that white people are
invisibly constructed as competent experts who provide solutions.
A last privilege I want to discuss is the ambivalent privilege of consumerism. Two out of three
posters who portray white people, show them as consumers.51 On one hand consumerism could be
viewed as belonging to McIntosh's first category of privileges, the possibility and the right to
consume should according to the capitalist logic be universal (Amin 1989: 103). Goudge (2003: 7)
however, argues that “Western consumerism contributes cumulatively to deepening poverty in much
of the 'Third World'” as it is build on an exploitative system, and according to Deleuze “the workers
of the rich countries necessarily take part in the plundering of the third world” (Deleuze and Parnet
1977/1987: 146, quoted in Hutnyk 1996: 11).52 Therefore I consider the privilege to profit from the
contemporary capitalist system of consumerism as belonging to McIntosh's second category of
privileges.
normativity - universalism
According to McIntosh (1997: 292f), white people consider themselves as normative, average and
ideal. While white people define what is normal and meanwhile set themselves equal to normality
or as a-paradigmatic, racialised Others are defined as particular or specific (Kilomba 2005: 82f). In
charity ads, this phenomenon is visible as charities write certain qualities and characteristics – such
as poor, needy or passive – into the black skin. Therewith, black people are positioned outside of
normality.
Through the notion of aid, however, white people allow Others to be like them. The 'theory of
modernisation' – which is implicitly present in each and every of these advertisements, has the goal
to organise and structure the world according to the white paragon (Arndt 2005a: 27).
'Development' is suggested as a “desirable condition” (Ziai 2004: 126), whereas white capitalist
societies are set as standards of humanity. Through the focus on deficiencies of the depicted black
people, charity organisations define what they need and what is 'good' for them: they define a
desirable normality. Simultaneously, charities construct the German society as the universal
measurement and as goal for the 'development' of the 'underdeveloped'. This logic follows an
eurocentric world view which sees itself as universal, relegates the rest of the world, into rigid
positions and defines what is good for it.
psychoanalytical analysis
51 I acknowledge that they consume fair trade products. As black people are never portrayed as consumer, these images
manifest the binary opposition of white people as consumer and black people as producer.
52 Arguments that poor white people would suffer in the first place from a global fair trade system as they could not
afford their standard of living any more and luxury products would be reserved for the rich, are frequently heard.
These arguments however include a strong sense of white superiority and do not question global inequalities.
26
Above, I discussed how the conventional Critical Whiteness Studies occasionally use a
psychoanalytical approach to analyse whiteness. I propose that this approach can be also applied for
my analysis, as charities use some of its strategies.
blaming the victim: By not addressing external or historical reasons for misery, but portraying it as
inherent characteristic of black people, charities put the blame of poverty on black people
themselves. This follows a neo-conservative logic53 wherein the 'underdeveloped' carries her/his
own responsibility for her/his 'underdevelopment' (Hansohm & Kappel 1994: 36, Goudge 2003: 6,
Jakobeit 2001: 451). Goudge (2003: 38, 50, 60) and Hutnyk (1996: 56) argue that it is a common
strategy in the 'development industry' to place the blame within national boundaries and meanwhile
neglect external factors.
denial: In order to portray whiteness as innocuous, the strategy of denial is used in multiple ways.
First, it is suggested that white people are part of the solution and not part of the problems of black
people (Goudge 2003: 50, 57). Charities alongside dominant German discourse deny a negative
impact of colonialism and imperialism and emphasise values of white humanism and mercy.54
Young and Pajaczkowska (1992: 202) argue that this very “denial of imperialism” underlies the
absence of whiteness. Typically for whiteness, the focus stays on the black subject, while white
actors are not named. However, it is suggested that both have equal opportunities.55 Therefore, not
only history, but also today's power differences are denied.
Wealth in Germany is not depicted in any of the advertisements and so charities deny that there has
to be seen a link between poverty and wealth. According to Goudge (2003: 15), charities “allow us
[the white people] to kid ourselves that we [...] are not exploiting anybody as we are there by
definition to 'do good'.” By unilaterally portraying black people as dependent on white generosity,
charity organisations deny that white people are dependent on black people in various different
ways.56 Goudge (2003: 160) focuses on the material dependency, in which as a result both, the
white comfort and white privileges rest upon exploitation practices.57 Both Khanna and Tißberger
highlight the psychological dependency, as “the idea of sustaining a modern self (...) is
constitutionally invested in creating a primitive and colonized other” (Khanna 2003: 100, quoted in
Tißberger 2006: 90).
Last but not least, through the focus on the Otherness of black people, charity ads deny that they
53 According to Hansohm & Kappel (1994: 36) a popular view of neo-conservative administrations such as Thatcher or
Reagan.
54 It is to note here, that Philipp (2006: 53ff) argues that German charities have their own colonial history as they have
to be related to missionary organisations. Missions claimed similar values. This relation, however, is not addressed.
55 Structurally, it comes close to the phenomena of colour blindness I discussed above.
56 The dependentistas, a group of scholars within postdevelopment theory argue that “the West was and still is both
dependent on, and responsible for, the 'underdevelopment' of the rest of the world” (Goudge 2003: 169).
57 The basis of this work is an understanding of history, regards slave trade and colonialism as engines for European
and North-American industrialism the richness derived from it. (see Hansohm & Kappel 1994: 44)
27
consider white people as the norm.
projection: The denial of one's own dependency on the Other results in a projection onto the Other.
Practically speaking this means that as it is psychologically and politically not possible to
acknowledge a white dependency on the black subject, charities construct the depicted black people
as dependent. Tißberger (2006: 91) argues that this strategy of projection is used in a more general
sense, through “transfer[ing] internal conflicts (e.g. contradictions within a society) on to others.”
After the piecemeal dismantlement of the social care system in Germany, poverty is a rising issue in
internal debates. Hence, with the projection of poverty into the African Savannah charities support a
conservative discourse within Germany and position the whole country as rich.
In the last chapter, I argued with Barthes that through a de-politicised understanding of the world,
whiteness evokes passivity of the white subject. In charity advertisements, in contrary, black people
are portrayed as passive. I assess this phenomenon as another form of projection.
abjection: Following Kristeva (in Tißberger 2006: 89) charity organisations mark black people as
different, declare them as impure and position them in “certain threshold zones” (McClintock 1995:
72) outside the norm. Through this process of abjection, a white German normality is constructed.
McClintock (1995: 72) argues that “[a]bject peoples are those whom industrial imperialism rejects
but cannot do without”. Charities portray black people according to this logic: they are rendered
abnormal, however, stay available for white psychological and material needs.
fantasies: The one who has the power of representation, has the possibility to diffuse her/his
fantasies. For example, I select one fantasy of the colonizer: the muteness of the colonized
(Kilomba 2005: 81). Out of all the analysed material there is not one advertisement in which a
black person is uttering something her/himself. Constantly, the charities silence black subjects and
speak in their name. Other fantasies which charities are able to diffuse through their
representational power and their access to resources are e.g. the fantasies of black people as objects,
as passive, as apolitical58 or as inherently happy.59
Barthes' Mythologies
I deem charity ads as promoters of the myth of white superiority. They form part of a narrative that
is needed for the construction of an illusory white identity (Goudge 2003: 170). The images of
racialised black people can be considered as form in Barthes' system of myth; as a medium for the
58 With the reduction of black subjects on suffering, the white fantasy that black people are apolitical is nourished. The
existence of political resistances and a complex network of local NGOs, social movements and political projects is
therewith ignored.
59 One favourite topic of depiction is the 'black-kid-as-grinning'. Hutnyk (1996: 57) questions the depiction of 'poor-asbeautiful'. Goudge (2003: 148f, 169) argues that this positive essentialism has to be seen as a strategy of power, as
both positive and negative stereotypes fix the Other in rigid stereotypes.
28
concept of white superiority.60 The advertisements thereby construct de-historicised racialised,
inferior, black subjects whose displayed characteristics of poverty, illness and passivity seem
inherent. Charities simply state facts, instead of giving genealogies. Hence, white superiority and
with it black inferiority are portrayed as a natural condition and not as historical constructions. I
would argue that exactly through images as those employed by the charities, whiteness manages to
neutralise itself, position itself as universal and erase its name: the representation of black people
and the non-representation of white people become naturalised. The effect of this naturalisation is a
de-politisation of historical processes, and additionally a de-politisation of the viewer.
Simultaneously, charity organisations essentialise political processes with their blaming the victim
approach. Through the focus on humanitarian issues and the neglection of political influences, they
draw a picture of reality as 'happening automatically'. It encourages the viewer to be passive as the
'acting forces' appear depersonal. Reacting to this 'natural' process seems to be the only possibility
of action. Although charities claim to transform the world, they portray the world as immobile and
eternalise present power relations. The final result is a construction of blackness as a metaphor, a
myth and an imaginary place (Hutnyk 1996: 2) for white dreams, desires and denials.
Barthes' methodology helps to expose the myth of white superiority narrated by charity
organisations, as the mythologist is able to mark whiteness and to circumvent a further
naturalisation. The rhetorical forms he outlined, offer in this case helpful tools to point out the
distorting effects of myth:
inoculation: Through the acknowledgement of only small portions of difference – which in addition
is defined by the charities – a questioning of the own privileged position of whiteness can be
circumvented. Charities always portray difference as inferior, thus, a danger of subversion can be
foreclosed. According to Barthes' argument, charities have to be held responsible for this
inoculation, they therewith buttress the power of whiteness.
privation of history: Charities use this rhetorical figure in two different ways. First, they portray
black people as natural people who live in a stone age environment and do not concede them a
historical past. Through the white power of definition – black people are betrayed of their history.
Second, by not discussing a white history which led to the portrayed 'underdevelopment', white
people are discharged of responsibilities and black people can be blamed. This logic is necessary in
political processes order to grant white people the illusion of generosity and moral greatness.
Charities in Germany are to a high percentage located in a Christian spectrum and appeal to notions
of pity, mercy and compassion. The act of donating has a religious value for the donor and is
strongly associated with alms – which carries an undertone of hierarchies. Through a one-sided
60 I want to remind the reader that Barthes considers myth as motivated and all concepts as intentional, also applies for
charities.
29
construction of history and through not talking about a duty on the one side and a right on the other
– which would imply a notion of reparation rather than donation – a good conscience instead of a
guilty conscience is made possible for the white subject.
identification: In the case of charity advertisements, the identification with the Other fails.
Therefore Barthes' proposal of exoticism as evasion comes into play. With the invisible assumption
of white as normal, black people can be expelled to the peripheries. The representation of black
people as exotic on the other hand, manifests the presumed central position of whiteness. The power
of whiteness is visible in an arbitrary, “complex and ambivalent interweaving of assimilationist
tendencies and rejectionism” (Goudge 2003: 157). Through the concept of 'development
cooperation'61 – in which charities define how development should take place – charities offer black
people the opportunity to become like white people. At the same time, however, they visually
confine them to the edges of humanity.
tautology: The message of the advertisements is: 'Black people are poor, because it is like this'.
Causalities are not discussed, hence charities manage through this rhetorical form to naturalise
their definition of the black subject. Charities enjoy authority, first, as they depict themselves as
(white) experts, who work “out there” (see Goudge 2003: 163) and second, because of the
repetitious character of their advertisements, their own discourse.
neither-norism: Charities keep silent in their ads about current global political structures. One
reason might be their philosophy that a shut mouth catches no flies, which lets them operate
problem-free inside Germany: it lets them cooperate with governmental institutions as well as
corporations. However, keeping silent about present forms of exploitation, unjust terms of trade and
an unequal distribution of power, implies accordance with them. Not to forget that the viewer – and
the designer – of charity ads profit from these very global structures. This rhetorical form
contributes again to the de-politisation of white Germans as it confirms their political passivity as
acceptable. By not taking an unequivocal stand on political issues, charities are able to appear as a
high morality which awards them another degree of authority.
quantification of quality: Charities seem to justify white superiority through a reference on the
quantity of technology it generated, or contrarily, on the lack of technology of the Other. Having no
modern technology, or being depicted as such, seems a reason to be rendered inferior. The multitude
of technological devices is thus seen as the tool to measure the quality of life.
statement of fact: Analogue to the figure of tautology, charities are able to position their assertions
as truth. Subjective world views are through the usage of the 'statement of fact' represented as
61 An interesting question to follow for a further research would be the similarities, connections and interweavings
between the myth of whiteness and the myth of 'development'.
30
neutral and objective. Backed by the institutions of the churches and the state, charities managed
during the last decades to attain a certain credibility. Buttressed through this authority, it seems that
charities only reproduce common sense, whereas they contribute in spreading the myth of white
superiority.
During the analysis, I realised two interesting aspects, which conducting further research on would
be worthwhile.
First, the myth of white superiority can be considered as a meta-myth. It consists of, retells and is
intertwined with several smaller myths. In the case of charity advertisements, it draws for example
on the myth of 'underdevelopment' or the myth that the charity industry fundamentally changes the
world.
Second, similarities between the results of the psychoanalytical analysis and Barthes' structural
analysis stroke me. Several psychoanalytical figures could be found in Barthes' rhetoric; e.g. the
figure blaming the victim approach in the form privation of history or the figure abjection in the
form identification. Not for nothing did Sandoval name the two systems the methodology of the
oppressed. While the psychoanalytical approach seems to be more commonly known, at least
among the German academia, I often encounter resistance against the transfer of psychoanalysis
into cultural studies. Critics might be interested that a structural analysis reaches similar results.
Conclusion
“[...] the judgement 'good' does not originate with those to
whom 'goodness' is shown! It was rather 'the good'
themselves, that is to say the noble, powerful, higher placed
and higher minded, who felt and positioned themselves and
their actions as good.” (Nietzsche 1977: 109)
I consider the main achievements of this work as following:
First, I added Barthes' mythology to the Critical Whiteness Theory as a tool to examine how the
myth of white superiority is able to naturalise history, to render itself invisible and to make itself
appear as universal at the same time. Additionally, to extend whiteness as analytical category and to
apply it to topics of charity, 'development' and representation succeeded inasmuch as the basic
characteristics of whiteness could be retrieved.
Second, the notion 'charity advertisements as part of the liberal white German discourse', could be
put into another perspective. I demonstrated that it is precisely its “bulk and depth” that whiteness
owes its “force and power” (Arndt 2005b: 349, translation TK). Seeming innocuous and having
31
noble intentions does not immunise against racist thought and practise. Charities are, following
Goudge (2003: 43), not responsible for the accruement of whiteness, but they are a mighty actor in
the manifestation and reproduction of its power.
Third, with the analysis of whiteness, it was possible to show how white oppressors are functioning
and which strategies are used. Especially the use of psychoanalytical figures and Barthes' rhetorical
forms proved to be very helpful tools to unmask their underlying assumptions. Out of my own
position as profiting from whiteness, I followed Spivak's suggestion and moved away from
“dramatis[ing] victimage” to an “auto-critical vigilance” (Spivak 1990: 230, quoted in Hutnyk
1996: 12). Turning away from the represented black subject to white strategies which underlie these
very representations revealed several personal patterns of behaviour that astonished and questioned
me various times. Marking whiteness, resulted in the awareness of the interweaving of racisms,
material inequalities and political injustices.
Undeniable, this essay constitutes a criticism against charity organisations. It is intentionally not
written as a constructive critique, as I am not only questioning the way charities ask for donations,
but likewise their concepts of 'development cooperation'. While the focus of this essay was laid on
the former, an analysis how the latter is connected to the power of whiteness would be an interesting
topic for further research.62
What next?
A next step, according to the 'critical pedagogues' of whiteness would be a program to educate white
decision makers as well as the white public about the outcome of such a study. Through a rational
line of argumentation, white people might acknowledge their position and start rethinking their
actions, thoughts and involvements.
Barthes and Fanon offer a different next step. Fanon invokes to “remak[e] signs in the interests of
renegotiating power” (Sandoval 1997: 101). Barthes goes further and asks us to become subversive
activists and to “mythify myth” (Barthes 2000: 135). According to him the best subversion is the
one that disfigures codes instead of destroying them.63
In the case of charity advertisements, this practise is already used. Adbusters – who distort
messages of billboard ads through adding or changing details – revolt against stereotypical
depiction and question norms reproduced by charities. Adbusters talk back to advertisements. They
unveil and challenge the power of definition and render possible decentralised, plural and diverse
representations of the Self as well as of the Other.
This way of subversion, of “forc[ing] the ossified conditions to dance by singing them their own
62 Ziai (2004: 369) argues that the paradigm of 'development' changed after the “crisis of development” in the 1980s.
This change of paradigms was not visible in the analysis of the advertisements of charities.
63 Barthes, in: autonome a.f.r.i.k.a gruppe et al (2001)
32
melody”64, is often quickly put aside as an unproductive method. I admit, that these subversions
only happen rarely and merely reach a limited number of people. Still, I agree with Klein that it is
dangerous to see adbusting “solely as harmless satire, a genre that exists in isolation from a genuine
political movement or ideology” (Klein 1999: 308). It is rather a tool among others (Klein 1999:
309).
Concluding, I argue that the result of this essay is to perceive reality as political. Political in a
double sense that a) what I perceive as reality has historical roots, although it might appear as
natural. It is formed by intentions, structured by a system and narrated for example through daily
myths. Resulting, b) I as subject, am able to take part in shaping reality through becoming political
myself: questioning representations, privileges or power structures. Be it in the classroom, the
street, in daily encounters or on the screen, it is not lacking possibilities to mark whiteness and to
reveal its strategies.
Bibliography
•
Amin, Samir (1989): Eurocentrism. London. Zed books.
•
Arndt, Susan (2004): Weiß-Sein, Roland Barthes la vaccine und die afrikanischfeministische Literatur, http://www2.hu-berlin.de/ffz/dld/arndt04.pdf (10.09.06).
•
Arndt, Susan (2005a): Weißsein. Die verkannte Strukturkategorie Europas und
Deutschlands. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt; Susan:
Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Münster. Unrast
Verlag. p.24-29.
•
Arndt, Susan (2005b): Mythen des weißen Subjekts: Verleugnung und Hierarchisierung von
Rassismus. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt; Susan:
Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Münster. Unrast
Verlag. p. 340-362.
•
Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth; Tiffin, Helen (2000): Post-Colonial Studies. The Key
Concepts. London. Routledge.
•
automome a.f.r.i.k.a. Gruppe/Luther Blissett/Sonja Brünzel (2001): Handbuch für
Kommunikationsguerilla. Berlin. Assoziation A.
•
Barthes, Roland (2000/1957): Mythologies. London. Vintage.
•
Bendix, Daniel (2006): Deutsche Bevölkerungspolitik in den Ländern des Südens. Eine
64 translation TK: „...man muß diese versteinerten Verhältnisse dadurch zum Tanzen zwingen, daß man ihnen ihre
eigne Melodie vorsingt! Man muß das Volk vor sich selbst erschrecken lehren, um ihm Courage zu machen.“ Karl
Marx 1943/44: „Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilospohie“ http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me01/me01_378.htm
33
genealogische Perspektive. Unveröffentlichte Magisterarbeit. Otto-Suhr Institut für
Politikwissenschaft. Freie Universität Berlin.
•
Bultmann, Rudolf (1941): Neues Testament und Mythologie. Das Problem der
Entmythologisierung der neutestamentlichen Verkündigung. München. Kaiser.
•
Connell, R.W. (1995): Masculinities. Cambridge. Polity/Blackwell.
•
Denzin, Norman K. (1995): The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze. London. Sage
Publications.
•
Dhawan &Mar Castro Varela (2003): Postkolonialer Feminismus und die Kunst zur
Selbstkritik. In: Steyerl, Hito & Gutiérrez Rodriguez, Encarnación: Spricht die Subalterne
deutsch? Migration und postkoloniale Kritik. Münster. Unrast. p. 270-290.
•
Dyer, Richard (1997): White. New York. Routledge.
•
El Tayeb, Fatima (2005): Vorwort. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche,
Peggy; Arndt; Susan: Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in
Deutschland. Münster. Unrast Verlag. p. 7-10.
•
Escobar, Arturo (1995): Encountering development: The making and the unmaking of the
Third World. Princeton, N.J.. Princeton University Press.
•
Fanon, Frantz (1982): Black Skin, White Masks. New York. Grove Press.
•
Frankenberg, Ruth (1997): White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of
Whiteness. In: Delgado, Richard & Stefancic, Jean (eds): Critical Whiteness Studies.
Looking behind the mirror. Philadelphia. Temple University Press.
•
Gilroy, Paul (1995): Roots and routes: Black identity as an international project. In: Griffith,
Ezra E.H.; Blue, Howard C.; Harris, Herbert W.: Racial and ethnic identity: psychological
development and creative expressions. New York. Routledge.
•
Goudge, Paulette (2003): The Power of Whiteness: Racism in Third World Development
and Aid. London. Lawrence & Wishart.
•
Hansohm, Dirk & Kappel, Robert (1994): Schwarz-Weiße Mythen. Afrika und der
entwicklungspolitische Diskurs. Münster/Hamburg. LIT Verlag.
•
Hall, Stuart (1994): Rassismus und kulturelle Identität. Ausgewählte Schriften 2. Hamburg.
Argument.
•
hooks, bell (1996): Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies. New York. Routledge.
•
Hutnyk, John (1996): The Rumour of Calcutta. Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of
Representation. London. Zed Books.
•
Jakobeit, Cord (2001): Entwicklungshilfe-Politik in Afrika. Welche Hilfe zu welcher
Entwicklung. In: Arndt, Susan (ed.): Afrikabilder. Studien zu Rassismus in Deutschland.
Münster. Unrast Verlag. p. 447-457.
•
Kiely, Ray (1999): The last refuge of the Noble Savage. A critical assessment of
34
postdevelopment theory. In: The European Journal of Development Research. 11 (1), p. 3055.
•
Kiesel, Timo (2006): Representation of Black people in Charity advertisements in Germany.
Unpublished.
•
Kilomba, Grada (2005): No Mask. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche,
Peggy; Arndt; Susan: Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in
Deutschland. Münster. Unrast Verlag. p. 80-89.
•
Klein, Naomi (1999): No logo: no space, no choice, no jobs: taking aim at the brand bullies.
London. Flamingo.
•
Van Leeuwen, Theo & Jewitt, Carey (eds.) (2001): Handbook of Visual Analysis. London.
Sage.
•
McClintock, Anne (1995): Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest. New York/ London. Routledge.
•
McIntosh, Peggy (1997): White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of
Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies. In: Delgado, Richard &
Stefancic, Jean (eds): Critical Whiteness Studies. Looking behind the mirror. Philadelphia.
Temple University Press. p. 291-299.
•
Morrison, Toni (1995): Im Dunkeln spielen. Weiße Kultur und literarische Imagination.
Rheinbeck bei Hamburg. Rowohlt.
•
Neverdeen Pieterse (1992): White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western
Popular Culture. New Haven and London. Yale University Press.
•
Nghi Ha, Kien (2005): Macht(t)raum(a) Berlin – Deutschland als Kolonialgesellschaft; In:
Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt; Susan: Mythen, Masken,
Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Münster. Unrast Verlag. p.105-117.
•
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1977): A Nietzsche Reader. London. Penguin Books.
•
Oxfam
(2002):
US
bullying
on
drug
patents:
one
year
after
Doha.
http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/briefingpapers/pp021112_bullying_patents (08.07.06)
•
Pajaczkowska, C. & Young, Lola 1992: Racism, Representation, Psychoanalysis. In:
Donald, J. & Rattansi A. (eds): Race, Culture and Difference. London, Sage. p.198-219.
•
Philipp, Carolin (2006): Weißsein in den Grundlagendokumenten von Misereor und Brot für
die Welt. Unveröffentlichte Magisterarbeit Politikwissenschaft. Universität Potsdam.
•
Piesche, Peggy (2005): Das Ding mit dem Subjekt, oder: Wem gehört die Kritische
Weißseinsforschung. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt;
Susan: Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Münster.
Unrast Verlag. p.14-17.
•
Sharma, Devinder (2005): Trade Liberalization in Agriculture. Lessons from the First 10
Years of the WTO. Brussels. APROVED.
35
•
Shiva, Vandana (undated): War against nature and the people of the South.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Globalization/War_Against_Nature_VFTS.html
(02.07.06)
•
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1999): A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Toward a history of
the vanishing present. Cambridge MA. Harvard University Press.
•
Strohschein, Juliane (2005): Als weiße Studierende in einer weißen Universität: erste
Positionierung. In: Eggers, Maureen Maisha; Kilomba, Grada; Piesche, Peggy; Arndt;
Susan: Mythen, Masken, Subjekte. Kritische Weißseinsforschung in Deutschland. Münster.
Unrast Verlag. p.506-513.
•
Tißberger, Martina (2006): The Project(ions) of 'Civilisation' and the Counter-transferences
of Whiteness: Freud, Psychoanalysis, 'Gender' and 'Race' (in Germany); In: Tißberger,
Martina; Dietze, Gabriele; Hrzán, Daniela; Husmann-Kastein, Jana (eds): Weiß – Weißsein –
Whiteness. Kritische Studien zu Gender und Rassismus. Frankfurt am Main. Peter Lang
Verlag. p. 85-104.
•
Treatment Action Commity (TAC) (2003): Reducing the Prices of Antiretroviral Medicines.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
http://www.tac.org.za/Documents/DrugCompaniesCC/20031028-CompetitionCommfurtherq-and-a.htm (08.07.06)
•
Wollrad, Eske (2005): Weißsein im Widerspruch, Feministische Perspecktiven auf
Rassismus, Kultur und Religion. Königstein. Ulrike Helmer Verlag.
•
Ziai, Aram (2004): Entwicklung als Ideologie? Das klassische Entwicklungsparadigma und
die Post-Development-Kritik. Hamburg. Schriften des Deutschen Übersee Instituts.
•
http://northonline.sccd.ctc.edu/beginnings/Kendall.htm
•
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/trade/subsidies/2002/10stopdumping.pdf
•
http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me01/me01_378.htm
•
http://www.saubere-kleidung.de
•
http://www.welt.de/data/2006/01/23/835218.html
•
http://www2.hu-berlin.de/ffz/dld/arndt04.pdf
(all websites viewed on 10.09.06)
36